A proposed school gives way to industrial use
A private school had received zoning relief in 2023 to use the Plymouth Meeting office building, but later abandoned the plan. By November 2024, Alliance HP had plans to retrofit the existing 143,000-square-foot property at 1 Innovation Drive for industrial and flex tenants, MoreThanTheCurve reported. Alliance bought the building in March 2024 for $11.3 million, according to Bisnow.
Leasing brings six occupants to the property
The building is now fully leased to six tenants in suites ranging from 10,000 to 45,000 square feet, Bisnow reported. Newmark leased 48,116 square feet to the first two tenants on Alliance HP’s behalf, according to MoreThanTheCurve. Nevro Corp. took 13,623 square feet for operations and engineering under a lease running through 2033, while Donnelly’s Home Comfort Specialists leased 34,493 square feet for office and warehouse use. Donnelly’s moved and expanded its headquarters and distribution center from Lansdale, according to Connect CRE. Bisnow reported that the other tenants include a restoration contractor and an e-commerce business.
The retrofit uses an existing office structure
Alliance converted the single-story office building rather than replacing it, installing 16 loading spaces. The property has 16-foot clear heights and more than 4,000 parking spaces, Bisnow reported. Jake Maldonado, Alliance HP’s Greater Philadelphia market leader, described the project’s location near the I-276 and I-476 interchange and Plymouth Meeting Mall as useful for reaching nearby high-income neighborhoods; that account was also reported by Bisnow.
Market figures provide context for the lease-up
CBRE data cited by Bisnow put direct vacancy at 4.4% for Greater Philadelphia industrial spaces of 50,000 square feet or below, compared with 18.4% for spaces between 500,000 and 750,000 square feet. The same report said no sub-50,000-square-foot industrial space was delivered in the region that year and no new projects of that size were in the pipeline. Nationally, CBRE found that more than 80% of shallow-bay inventory in major U.S. markets was built before 2000, while buildings constructed since 2010 account for 5%, according to CBRE.
CBRE also reported that national shallow-bay asking rents in 2025 were more than 50% above 2010 levels. In a separate comparison, CompStak data cited by Bisnow showed year-over-year rent growth of almost 9% for Philadelphia-area industrial spaces under 150,000 square feet, versus about 4% in Atlanta, Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth.
